7 reasons why letting myself get too busy hurts me:

I feel unable to explore my more creative, clever side.
I am an intelligent,creative individual. I am capable of very clever ideas. But I never have a proper moment to think of these ideas lying deep inside me. I am always too busy doing stuff.

COST: Those clever, creative ideas never get born.

All my time is already allocated. That means I can’t act on special opportunities ( or maybe even notice them) when they come up. (Read the Prologue: Starting with a Handshake (p xi) in Creating a World Without Poverty where Muhummad Yunus, creator of the Grameen Bank (micro-finance), describes the magnificent thing that happens because he wasn’t too busy to act on a special opportunity that presented itself to him.)COST: High-impact opportunities fail to get turned into realities.

I am so booked-up to do daily, routine tasks I have no chance to explore higher order strategic issues where I could make big impact.COST: I am failing to fully exploit my opportunity to display leadership.

I feel bad a lot of the time. I do clever and wonderful things all day long — things I should proud of. But I never seem to have a moment just to sit back and and feel proud of what I’ve just done. That’s because as soon as I finish one thing, I must start another.

I constantly work to a point of exhaustion and don’t get enough sleep. As a result, I don’t feel good:

(a) My mood feels flat and I feel less responsive to other people’s needs. My focus turns inwards, I feel numb towards other people and my “world shrinks”. Other people feel hurt by my seeming indifference and our relationship suffers. I feel guilty about this sense of numbness, which makes me feel even worse about myself.

(b) My life feels very unbalanced – I haven’t got time or energy to devote to other things like my health or making time for others or having fun. I tell myself “I’ll just get over this hump, and then I can attend to those other important things.” But then something else comes up.

(c) I am not enjoying my work so much anymore. It used to be so satisfying, but now everything feels like a big chore. There’s no joy anymore.

(d) I have really low energy and it’s such an effort dragging my body around.

(e) I have a sense of total lack of control over my time – every spare minute seems to be allocated. I no longer feel I have any free choice over how I spend my time. COST: I suffer burn-out, depression, stress and inflammation in various parts of my body, leading to reduced immunity, symptoms and ultimately killer diseases — of course a rotten quality of life.

I am not functioning at my peak. My attention is so focused on all these consuming tasks that I fail to notice small, minor problems arising. Or if I do notice them, I don’t have the energy to deal with them. As a result, some of these small problems grow into big, serious problems.COST: Problems that I would normally deal with end up costing me dearly.

I am working under so much pressure and so tired that I am starting to make errors. These are errors of ineptitude such as forgetting to do things I wouldn’t normally forget to do or cutting corners in my thinking. I hate making these errors because I know they are so avoidable. I beat myself up badly for making them. I end up losing confidence in myself.COST: I lose confidence in myself and my self-respect.

Conclusion: It’s smart to give ourselves the luxury of opting out for short spells during the day–to reflect, to gain perspective, pat ourselves on the back for jobs done well, to catch our breath, and so on. Just 5 or 10 minutes here and there could make all the difference.

Look for things to kill.

“Robert Townsend suggests that every company should have a vice president in charge of killing things. He says, ‘General Foods, the AFL-CIO, the Bureau of the Budget, and the Ford Foundation should make it a practice to wipe out their worst product, service, or activity every so often. And I don’t mean cutting it back or remodeling it–I mean right between the eyes.‘ ”

from Edwin Bliss’sbook Getting Things Done, p 90

Read selectively.

“Perhaps the most succinct comment on selectivity in reading is by James McCay, who asks, ‘Would you like to be able to read 50,000 words a minute? There are many time when it is easy to do this if you know how. All you have to be able to do is to recognize within one minute that a 50,000-word book does not suit your purposes, and decide not to read it.‘ ”

from Edwin Bliss’s book Getting Things Done, p 97

Getting things done means finishing what you start.

“In baseball, victory is determined not by hits but by runs. The player who gets to third base and no farther doesn’t get credit for three-quarters of a run.

It’s that way with a task. Getting started is fine, and carrying it forward is fine, but until the task is completed you haven’t done what you set out to do. Yet many people form the habit of “working for a while” on a project, then setting it aside, kidding themselves into thinking that they have accomplished something. All they are doing is leaving men stranded on base!”

from Edwin Bliss’s book Getting Things Done, p 114

Watch out for upward delegation.

“In a Harvard Business Review article, William Oncken, Jr., and Donald Wass give a perceptive analysis of what they call “subordinate-imposed time”:

“Let us imagine that a manager is walking down the hall and he notices one of his subordinates, Mr. A, coming up the hallway. When they are abreast of one another, Mr. A greets the manager with, “Good morning. By the way, we’ve got a problem. You see. . . .” As Mr. A continues, the manager recognizes in this problem the same two characteristics common to all the problems his subordinates gratuitously bring to his attention. Namely, the manager know (a) enough to get involved, but (b) not enough to make a on-the-spot decision expected of him. Eventually, the manager says, “So glad you brought this up. I’m in a rush right now. Meanwhile, let me think about it and I’ll let you know.” Then he and Mr. A part company.

Let us analyze what has just happened. Before the two of them met, on whose back was the”monkey”? The subordinate’s. After they parted, on whose back was it? The manager’s. Subordinate-imposed time begins the moment a monkey successfully executes a leap from the back of a subordinate to the back of his superior and does not end until the monkey is returned to its proper owner for care and feeding.

. . .The only way to end upward delegation is to toss the ball right back to your subordinates. When they habitually come to you with problems and ask you to make a decision, simply ask, “Which course do you think would be better?” Force them to make decisions (or at least firm recommendations) themselves, and unless some very serious mistake is likely, don’t second-guess them.”

from Edwin Bliss’s book Getting Things Done, p 116-7

Memorize these words: Next time. . .

“A famous New York psychiatrist, nearing the end of a long and illustrious career several years ago, said that the most useful concept he had discovered for helping people turn their lives around was what he called his “four little words.” The first two were if only.

“Many of my patients have spent their lives living in the past,” he said, “anguishing about what they should have done in various situations. ‘If only I had prepared better for that interview . . .’ ‘If only I had expressed my true feeling to the boss . . .’ ‘If only I had taken that accounting course . . .’ ”

Wallowing in this sea of regret is a serious emotional drain. The antidote is simple: eliminate those two words from your vocabulary. Substitute the words next time, and tell yourself, ‘Next time I’m going to be prepared . . .Next time I’m going to speak out . . .Next time I have a chance I’m going to take that class . . .’ ”

from Edwin Bliss’s book Getting Things Done, p 44-5

Conquer procrastination with the “Salami Technique”.

“A salami in its original state, before it has been cut, is unwieldy and looks unappetizing. But cut it into thin slices and it takes on quite a different aspect. Now you have something manageable, something you can “get your teeth into.”

When you realize you are procrastinating on a major task, slice it up into as many small, manageable “instant tasks” as possible. Promise yourself that you won’t force yourself to get involved with the main job, provided you do at least one of the small steps on your list.

. . .Remember the first slice–the first instant task–is always to list in writing the small steps involved in getting the job done.

“Divide and conquer” applies to tasks just as it does to armies or enemies.”

Parkinson’s Law

Nov 19th 1955

IT is a commonplace observation that work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion. Thus, an elderly lady of leisure can spend the entire day in writing and despatching a postcard to her niece at Bognor Regis. An hour will be spent in finding the postcard, another in hunting for spectacles, half-an-hour in a search for the address, an hour and a quarter in composition, and twenty minutes in deciding whether or not to take an umbrella when going to the pillar-box in the next street. The total effort which would occupy a busy man for three minutes all told may in this fashion leave another person prostrate after a day of doubt, anxiety and toil. . .

Up the tempo!

Set stretch targets for skill activities e.g. Goal: Win 3 points from my drop-shot in this set of tennis.

Set lots of mini-deadlines.

Play the game of trying to see how much you can accomplish in a given time.

Use good time-management tools

If you do a lot of writing or computer work, use two monitors. One is not enough!

Use a headset for phone or hands-free phone.

Get yourself a large storage unit and fill it with household objects organized in alphabetical order. B = batteries; U = umbrella, etc. it’s a good system for storing and finding stuff.

Get a kitchen timer. Set it to go off in 25 minutes (or whatever). Then work flat out on a task without stopping until the timer goes off.

Get yourself a standing desk so you can alternate between sitting and standing while working. You may work better standing!

Buy and learn to use voice-recognition software.

Wear a golfer’s counting watch and click the counter every time you catch yourself working well or finishing something.

Use Google Calendar; this way, if you have a smart phone, you’ll always have your calendar with you. And you can set Google calendar to alert you when events are coming up.

Find a random signal generator and get it to beep you every 15 minutes or so to remind you to check how you’re working e.g. “Am I using my time well right now?” I created a simple random signal generator by inserting signals into a multi-hour audio file.

Eat regularly throughout the day to keep up your blood glucose level, especially while doing cognitively or emotionally demanding activities.

Conquer procrastination

Do your ugliest task of the day first. That way, the rest of the day will feel great. (This is is called “Eat the toad first”!)

If you’ve been putting off doing a dreaded task for a long time and you catch yourself wanting to do it, stop everything and do it! Strike while the iron’s hot!

Develop a “getting started” ritual. For example, take three deep breaths, visualize yourself doing all the steps to complete the task ahead of you, and then say “Let’s go!”

If you become immobilized with fear, work out a routine that works for you to get yourself moving on it again (!)

﻿﻿If there’s something that needs to be done and you catch yourself having procrastinating thoughts about doing it, think about what procrastinating thoughts you’re telling yourself and write them down. Sometimes, awareness of how silly you’re being and the chore and shame of having to write those excuses down might be enough to get you to do what you’re wanting to put off.

Write down the things you procrastinate about as they happen. This way you can learn what things you procrastinate about and why.

Divide and conquer. Apply the salami technique. Break down overwhelming or unpleasant tasks into bite-sized pieces.

Settle for “good enough” instead of “perfect” more often.

Cunning strategies to manage time-wasting phone calls

Call at inconvenient times e.g. meal times or just before lunch and end of day when phoning people who trap you into long conversations.

Stand up when calling someone who might entice you into prolonged conversation.

Rote-learn conversation escape lines: “I’d love to keep chatting, but I’ve got some people waiting outside to see me.” “I’m working to a deadline right now. Can I call you later?”

Automate things/create automatic habits

Work hard to create automatic habits and routines e.g. have a “first thing in morning” routine, a ‘getting ready to give a presentation” routine, etc

Set implementation intentions to create automatic habits. For example, “If I am going up the stairs, I will run up.” “If I’m about to phone someone for a catch-up chat, I will spend a few moments beforehand thinking about what they’ve been up to and what to ask them about.”

Work hard to create productive habits that will repay you handsomely for your trouble the rest of your life. (High return on investment!)

Practice making routine decisions easily. Work out effective strategies beforehand e.g. pick the restaurant with easy parking or is likely to be quiet, toss a coin if I can’t decide, etc.

Be aware

Be aware of how you’re spending your time. Regulary pull yourself out of unconscious mode into conscious mode.

Set up a random signal generator to beep you every 15 minutes or so as a cue to check whether you’re spending your time wisely right now.

Try not to interrupt others if busy working. Find a time that suits you both.

﻿Be fully focused: focus your energy and attention on just one thing at a time.

Always ask yourself: “Is there a better way to do this?”

Break your day into 10-minute segments and see how few 10-minute segments you can waste (Ingvar Kamprad’s idea).

Focus your energy and time on things you can control and learn to ignore things you can’t control.

Work out effective strategies beforehand e.g. prefer quiet restaurants, arrive before rush hour, arrive at cinema early enough to choose good seats, etc.

Spend a few moments at the end of each day savoring the good moments. Not only will you have the pleasure of re-living these good moments, but the act of recalling them will help lock them into your long -term memory.

Schedule time wisely

Identify your most creative time, protect it, use it well, and defend it ruthlessly.

Get up 15 minutes earlier than usual and see if you miss the sleep. Give yourself two weeks to adjust before deciding.

Identify your cognitively dead times at work, and schedule easy tasks during this time e.g. exercise, phone calls, meetings, etc

Read intelligently

Read selectively. You can waste a lot of time mindlessly reading stuff.

Apply what you read. Otherwise, what’s the point of reading it?

After you’ve been reading for a while, stop and recall what you’ve read. Then check what you’ve forgotten. This is painful to do, but it helps to lock in the key points into your memory.

Before reading a lengthy document, write down what you’re hoping to find out. Setting the intention will help your brain spot relevant information when it appears and ignore the other stuff.

Master time-saving skills

Learn how to type.

Learn how to concentrate.

Learn how to communicate well.

Learn how to make routine decisions quickly.

Learn how to coach others well. Don’t re-do your subordinates’ poor work for them; teach them how to do their work the way you want them to do it.

Learn how to create good habits that will repay you a thousand-fold and stop bad habits that cost you big time when added up over time.

Learn how to get your children to be helpful, contributing members of the house.

Learn how to estimate accurately how long a task will take. Before starting any task, estimate how long you think it will take; then see how accurate you were. You’ll soon get much better at estimating how long things take in real life.

Manage other people well

Give really clear instructions to others about what you want.

Ask people when they write to you to “open with their news” ( i.e. begin with their key point); this way you won’t have to read most of the document in a vacuum. If the report is longer than 4 pages, insist on an opening executive summary.

Get people in meetings to focus on the question: “What is the next action we need to take?”

Don’t wastenow:

You can do so much in 10 minutes. Ten minutes, once gone, is gone for good.
Divide your life into 10-minute units and sacrifice as few of them as possible in meaningless activity.~Ingvar Kamprad (founder of IKEA)

Get off your butt and do something. Lots of people have ideas, but few decide to do something about them now. Not tomorrow. Not next week. But today.
~Robert Browning

Soon is not as good as now.
~Seth Godin

Begin what you want to do now. We are not living in an eternity.
~M.B. Ray

Don’t leave for tomorrow what you can do today.~Ben Franklin (up-dated)

Yesterday is a cancelled check.
Tomorrow is a promissory note.
Today is ready cash. Use it!
~Anon

Make time for planning:

You can achieve anything you want in life if you have the courage to dream it, the intelligence to make a realistic plan, and the will to see that plan through to the end.
Sidney A. Friedman

Vowing, even intense vowing, is often useless. The next day comes and the next day goes. What works is making a vivid, concrete plan. . .about when where, and how.
~Carol Dweck

In the absence of clearly-defined goals, we become strangely loyal to performing daily trivia until ultimately we become enslaved by it.
~Robert Heinlein

The first step to getting the things you want out of life is this: Decide what you want.
~Ben Stein

Pull the trigger–take action:

An ounce of action is worth a ton of theory.
~Ralph Waldo Emerson

You can’t build a reputation on what you’re going to do.
~Henry Ford

The way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing.
~Walt Disney

A thousand mile journey begins with one step. Start today.
~Unknown

We accomplish in proportion to what we attempt. Have a go!
~Unknown

The only true failure lies in the failure to start.
~Harold Blake Walker

There is always a step small enough from where we are to get us to where we want to be. If we take that small step, there’s always another we can take, and eventually a goal thought to be too far to reach becomes achievable. ~Ellen Langer

Every accomplishment starts with the decision to try.
~Unknown

There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.~Maya Angelou

We should not be taught to wait for inspiration to start a thing. Action always generates inspiration. Inspiration seldom generates action.
~Frank Tibolt

A wise person does at once, what a fool does at last. Both do the same thing; only at different times.~Baltasar Gracian

Many people have a good aim in life, but for some reason they never pull the trigger.
~Unknown

It had long since come to my attention that people of accomplishment rarely sat back and let things happen to them. They went out and happened to things.
~Leonardo da Vinci

Vision is not enough. It must be combined with venture. It is not enough to stare up the steps; we must also step up the stairs.
~Vaclac Havel

We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, therefore, is not an act but a habit.
~Aristotle

As I grow older I pay less attention to what men say. I just watch what they do.
~Andrew Carnegie

Action will destroy your procrastination.
~Og Mandino

Keep going:

Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.
~Thomas Edison

It’s not that I’m so smart, it’s just that I stay with problems longer.~Albert Einstein

No problem can withstand the assault of sustained thinking.
~Voltaire

Most of the important things in the world have been accomplished by people who have kept on trying when there seemed no hope at all.
~Dale Carnegie

History has demonstrated that the most notable winners usually encountered heart-breaking obstacles before they triumphed. They won because they refused to become discouraged by their defeats.~B.C. Forbes

Check how things are turning out and correct mistakes:

However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results.
~Winston Churchill

Part of being a winner is knowing when enough is enough. Sometimes you have to give up the fight and walk away and move on to something that’s more productive.~Donald Trump

What can I learn from this setback? What will I do next time?
~Carol Dweck

If you ask people to do things and they usually don’t get around to them, stop asking yourself, “What’s the matter with people these days?” Instead, ask yourself, “What’s the matter with me? What am I doing ( or failing to do) that causes people to give me empty promises?”
~Edwin Bliss

Nothing is so fatiguing as the eternal hanging on of an uncompleted task.
~William James

We rate ability in men by what they finish, not by what they attempt.
~Unknown

Getting it done is my reward.
~Benjamin Franklin

The reward of a thing done well is to have done it.~Ralph Waldo Emerson

It is astonishing how long it takes to finish something you are not working on.
~Unknown

It’s not important who starts the game but who finishes it.
~John Wooden

The world is cluttered up with unfinished business in the form of projects that might have been successful, if only at the tide point someone’s patience had turned to active impatience.
~Robert Updegraff

De-clutter your life:

If in doubt, throw it out.
~Anon

A place for everything, and everything in its place.
~Anon

A few fat files are better than a lot of thin ones.
~Edwin Bliss

Less, but better.
~Dieter Rams

Control regret and worry

Never let yesterday use up today.~Richard H. Nelson

Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could … Tomorrow is a new day; begin it well and serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.
~Ralph Waldo Emerson

No worry before its time.
~Ellen Langer

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So. . .sail away from the safe harbor. Explore. Dream. Discover.
~Mark Twain

Don’t worry about failure. Worry about the chances you miss when you don’t even try.
~Sherman Finesilver

What we fear doing most is usually what we most need to do.
~Tim Ferriss

Don’t be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment.
~Ralph Waldo Emerson

Use tools and other people to help you:

No matter how expert you may be, well-designed checklists can improve outcomes.
~Steven Levitt

The shortest pencil is longer than the longest memory.
~Unknown

I not only use all the brains I have, but all that I can borrow.
~Woodrow Wilson

Spend your time wisely:

If you are too busy to exercise, you are too busy.
~Edwin Bliss

It is more important to do the right thing than to do things right.
~Peter Drucker

It’s better to do the right thing slowly than the wrong thing quickly.
~Peter Turla

Deciding what not to do is as important as deciding what to do.
~Steve Jobs

The greatest use of life is to spend it for something that will outlast it.
~William James

If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. Then quit. There’s no point in being a damn fool about it.
~W. C. Fields

If you had to identify, in one word, the reason why the human race has not achieved, and never will achieve, its full potential, that word would be: “meetings.”
~Dave Barry

Take charge of your time:

Work expands to fill the time available for its completion.
~Parkinson’s Law

You will never “find” time for anything. If you want time, you must make it.~Charles Bruxton

Don’t say you don’t have enough time. You have exactly the same number of hours per day that were given to Helen Keller, Pasteur, Michelangelo, Mother Teresa, Leonardo da Vinci, Thomas Jefferson, and Albert Einstein.~H. Jackson Brown

Once you have mastered time, you will understand how true it is that most people overestimate what they can accomplish in a year – and underestimate what they can achieve in a decade!~Anthony Robbins

Don’t be fooled by the calendar. There are only as many days in the year as you make use of. One man gets only a week’s value out of a year while another man gets a full year’s value out of a week.~Charles Richards

Nothing is a waste of time if you use the experience wisely.~Rodin

Perhaps the most valuable result of all education is the ability to make yourself do the thing you have to do when it ought to be done, whether you like it or not; it is the first lesson that ought to be learned; and however early a man’s training begins, it is probably the last lesson that he learns thoroughly.
~Thomas Huxley

Money, I can only gain or lose. But time I can only lose. So, I must spend it carefully.~Anon

Some time-management truisms:

The first step to getting the things you want out of life is this: Decide what you want.
~Ben Stein

Of all the time-saving techniques ever developed, perhaps the most effective is the frequent use of the word no.~Edwin Bliss

Nothing will work unless you do.
~John Wooden

We all have times when we think more effectively, and times when we should not be thinking at all.
~Daniel Cohen

It is surprising what a man can do when he has to, and how little most men will do when they don’t have to.~ Walter Linn

Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life.
~ Confucius